


A Noble Metal

by daphnerunning



Series: What is Wrought Between Us [2]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Cousin Incest, M/M, Secret Marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:28:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27654803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daphnerunning/pseuds/daphnerunning
Summary: Those who live long must still navigate the uncertain tides of timing. But Formenos isn't too far, and how could there be a place where Maitimo is that Findekàno cannot reach?
Relationships: Fingon | Findekáno/Maedhros | Maitimo
Series: What is Wrought Between Us [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2019358
Comments: 11
Kudos: 60





	A Noble Metal

The forge at Formenos was stoked to blazing hot, a sign that Fëanor would be by later to use it, like as not. He often stoked it and forgot, however, losing focus in the creation of a new alphabet, a new way to reflect sound, anything the Valar had shaped that he could improve. When last Maitimo had seen his father, he’d been bent over a sketchbook in his office, hand flying through a new design, leaving brush marks and torn shreds of paper in his wake.

“We’ll have long enough,” he’d judged, and coaxed Findekáno out of hiding, huddled in the bushes outside his window.

At least in the forge, Findekáno showed little sign of the hesitation, the reticence that he’d displayed for the last months. Not that Maitimo could blame him; they’d been deeply unlucky in their choice of timing. Maitimo had believed the silver light of Telperion had guided only the two of them hand in hand down from the mountain, but Yavanna’s softer creation had lighted other pursuits that night.

By the time the two of them had arrived, words of love upon their lips, ready to announce that in a year there would be a mighty feast, they’d found a crowd in the Great Square, their fathers at odds, a weapon pointed by an elf at an elf for the first time, and exile.

The announcement could wait, they’d both decided. With eternity before them, what mattered a few days, until passions faded and fellowship grew once more from fury?

Months passed. Nerves began to fray. Maitimo visited Tirion seldom, ostensibly to escort his youngest brothers to meet with their mother, who seemed no less full of love for them as she had for him, in his youth. Maitimo took comfort in that, though her words were seldom for him any longer, and he knew his father’s features showed strongly in his own. His elder brothers were poor company in exile, and his father seldom left office or forge.

Nigh on one year after they left for Formenos, he’d sat bolt upright in the middle of the night, certain he was being attacked by the spectre of Melkor himself--Morgoth, he’d corrected himself, knowing his father’s rage should he say the Valar’s original name. But it hadn’t been an attacker--at least, not one he did not welcome, and Findekáno had simply laughed, and said his window was not all _that_ high, and surely, Maitimo would never find himself in a place so high that Findekáno could not find him, even should he need the favorable winds of Manwë himself to make the ascent.

Maitimo, overcome with love, had begun to speak, to pour out his sorrow, his apology, his wish, but Findekáno had simply placed a fingertip against his lips. “My will has not changed,” he’d said, simple and sweet. “Has yours?”

“No.”

“Then nothing has. Kiss me, and speak no words of fathers and forbidding.”

Thrice now, Findekáno had climbed up his window. This time, struck by inspiration, Maitimo had dragged him to the forge. “When I was making you a ring, you wanted to watch, and I was too shy to let you see,” he said, cherishing each moment his fingers spent twined with with his cousin’s. He wore his own ring on a chain about his neck, as did Findekáno, he knew, until they found the words to enlighten their families. “I was too timid to let you watch me draw silver. Come watch me draw gold, before I give it to you at the feast.”

Findekáno’s face flushed. “You think we’ll be able to fix things like this?” he asked, eager hope in his voice. “Perhaps, if we can get them all together for a wedding feast--“

“No more of fathers and forbidding,” Maitimo said firmly. “Speak only words of praise, I weary of my brothers informing me just how atrocious a smith I am.”

“And if I can find no words of praise to speak?”

“Then you may show off your skills once more, and sing my praises instead.”

“After you’ve spent the last year and more shut up with Macalaurë? Let me know when you spend years shut up with _my_ brother, and then you’ll be begging me for a song.”

Maitimo closed his eyes for a moment, as the heat of the forge drew near. “I haven’t heard him called that in quite a while,” he said softly. Nor had he heard anyone call him by his own mother-name, except when Findekáno stole through his window to whisper, “ _My will is as your will, Maitimo. Until the world is remade.”_

“If Father does show up,” Maitimo said, disinclined to bring it up, but unable not to, “perhaps we should discuss what we will say.”

“Hmm.” Findekáno considered, then suggested, “Perhaps we could tell him that I missed the company of my beloved cousin, with whom I’ve been close my entire life, my best friend and my closest confidante?”

“I--well, yes, I suppose,” Maitimo said, taken somewhat aback. “I suppose...there’s nothing wrong with that, is there?”

“What could be wrong with the truth?”

Maitimo smiled, and turned away before Findekáno could see the doubt furrowing his brow. His father had often found issue with some truths.

“Is there a design you must have?” he asked instead of saying such a thing, pulling the nugget of gold ore he’d carried since his last visit to Tirion. His father’s forge might contain every sort of metal known to elvenkind, but this, Maitimo wanted to come only from him.

“Aye. The one you invent.”

“Troublesome,” Maitimo informed him, to general laughter.

He set up the rollers, carving out each tiny billet, heating the metal to the greatest malleability before drawing. Findekáno began inventing an insouciant song, making nonsense words out of his amilessë and epessë, combining Maitimo and Russandol into something that sounded like _Maitrus_.

“What’s that?” he asked, lips twitching as he brought out the draw plates and wax, beginning to draw the wire. “Am I to be part of one and part of another? Well-haired, perhaps? Or Red-shaped?”

Findekáno gave him a look that he would likely call a scowl, and Maitimo called a pout. “It will be well-formed, _and_ red-haired. Adding together does not diminish either. Let me play with your name. Watching you distracts me from more serious songs.”

“Does it?”

“It does,” Findekáno informed him tartly. “You are responsible.”

“You were able to sing when I forged last time.”

“Last time, I was vigorously pretending not to wish I were your tongs, Maitimo.”

“As I recall, you were wishing to be my father.”

“You are recalling wrongly on purpose!”

“Perhaps,” Maitimo suggested, his voice light, “it is not only you who are easily distracted by company.”

Findekáno gave him a skeptical look. “Truly?”

“You doubt it?”

Findekáno shrugged one shoulder. He looked uncomfortable in the forge. It wasn’t a comfortable building, by design. Fëanor had never considered the comfort of anyone in his forge, least of all himself. “You always seem so composed. Not as if...as if you burn, as I do.”

Maitimo drew the gold wire, now the length of his arm, through another hole, and cast a look over at the younger elf. Whatever Findekáno saw in his gaze made him suck in a breath, and Maitimo smiled, bending again to his task. “I would have you tonight,” he said, aiming for offhand calm, when even the thought of such an act made him feel as if his father’s fires were pale imitations of flame indeed, compared to what burned in his breast. “All that restrains me is the fear of you in later years, lamenting that it wasn’t done correctly.”

Findekáno licked his lips, long-lashed eyes dipping low, a rush of heat coloring his cheeks. “If my later years are spent with you, Maitimo, there will be no lamentation.”

Maitimo’s skin felt suddenly tight all over. He paused in his labors, wiping his palms on his apron before beginning to draw another billet, trying to focus on anything but Findekáno. “Sometimes,” he said, long minutes later, as he moved on to the third wire, “when my intended speaks, he makes me feel a creature entirely of _hröa,_ as if my _fëa_ were but a slave.”

“I want both,” Findekáno said simply, with no shame. “Your body, and your spirit, Maitimo. And I’ll have them.”

Maitimo’s mouth felt dry. He nodded, unable to do otherwise. “You will,” he said, helpless. _You do_.

The door to the forge opened, and without turning, Maitimo knew the shadow for his father’s before he said a word. He froze, all too aware that he was the last of his brothers to be expected at the forge, and his father’s face said similarly. “Nelyo?” he asked, incredulous.

Maitimo held entirely still. His father was not only powerful in craft, but in spirit, and he dared not cast even a thought at Findekáno, for fear his father might hear it. “Father,” he said, as if this were a normal place for him to be. “I’ll move out of your way.”

“No, stay.” Fëanor, High Prince of the Noldor, firstborn son of Finwë, came close, peering down at the draw plates. “Hm. The consistency is good. Your temper needs work. What’s this meant to be, so finely drawn?”

Maitimo’s mind went blank. His thoughts of the golden braid he’d meant to work fled from his mind, the intricate designs fading at once. The silver ring felt heavy against his chest, beneath his shirt, and his ears strained to hear Findekáno’s breath. “It’s...for someone in Tirion, that I wish had a gift of my hand,” he said carefully, and knew at once he had erred, when his father’s curious look vanished into black anger.

Fëanor scowled down at the wires. “You’ve drawn them too fine,” he said, a bitterness in the words that hadn’t been there before. “And cooled them too quickly. Creation doesn’t live in your soul, Nelyo. These are only fit to be decoration.”

The word in his mouth was full of scorn. Before Maitimo could say anything else, his father had taken down a flat-faced cross-peen hammer, and taken his place, powerful strokes of the tool pounding the wires so flat they would have made paper look unwieldy. Maitimo’s hands clenched in the front of his apron, and he schooled his face to careful neutrality.

Fëanor tossed his hammer down, the wires fine and flat and thin, his skill magnificent even in his fury. “Tell your mother to have Indis make her something out of that, if she can.”

He turned, dark hair flying behind him, whatever his original errand at the forge had been forgotten. Maitimo felt himself sinking, shoulders slumping as he looked at the ruin of his work. “Finno? Are you--“

“Here.”

Just that word--something unbroken, unmaligned--made a shiver of surcease run down Maitimo’s spine. “Worry not. I can melt it down and start again,” he assured Findekáno, who peeled himself out of the shadows. “Gold is a noble metal, it can be reforged without damage. No smithcraft can truly destroy it.”

He wasn’t expecting Findekáno’s warm hands on his face, tilting it down, or the hard kiss that followed. It stole his breath, drove thoughts of his own cowardice out of his head, and made him suddenly desperate for things he’d never before put name to. His hands came down to rest on strong shoulders, gripping tightly, as if he could hold Findekáno’s spirit to his own with physical force.

They pulled apart, firelight playing on Findekáno’s comely face, the soft colors belying the stubborn set of his jaw. “Is it still mine?”

“My heart?” Maitimo asked, startled. “Of course.”

“No. My ring.”

Maitimo looked down at the fine ribbons, and his heart constricted. “Of course. Let me just melt them down, and--“

“I want it now.” Findekáno’s hand closed over his, warm and certain. “Gold is a noble metal, is it not? Like the feelings you put into them, they won’t be destroyed even if...someone...changes them.”

He turned to face the wall, and shook out his hair, letting it fall straight and black down his back. “I would wear it now, if you’d give it to me.”

Maitimo’s throat closed. He blinked the sting from his eyes, reaching up to card his fingers through the soft, thick tresses. “You want me to give it to you now? No feast, no words from our parents...?”

“The strife between them will not be mended in a matter of months,” Findekáno said, and his voice was gentle, but firm. “I am not so much a fool as to pin the starting date of my happiness to the moment the passions of Fëanor cool. If you would regret being wed without your parents’ approval, I will wait. But...”

He raised his hands, palms spread, as if nothing more needed to be said. As if they were not High Princes of the Noldorin, firstborn sons of proud fathers who expected much of them. “I am here,” he said, and the words were an offer as much as a statement.

Maitimo reached for the gold wire, now thin ribbon, and was surprised his hands did not shake. “My parents...” The words faded, as his hands threaded through Findekáno’s hair, braiding the ribbons into the thick strands. “Aye. I will give you this, that should have been my ring. Mayhap seeing it in your hair will remind me of my own cowardice in the face of my father, but I hope not.”

“Don’t worry, my Maitrus,” Findekáno assured him. “I will be far too beautiful for you to think of anyone else, when you see me.”

Maitimo laughed, and felt an easing of the band of tension around his chest. He tied off a ribbon and plucked another, the motion coming more easily now. “Come away with me. Turko and Moryo leave to go hunting all the time, no one will think it amiss.”

“Away with you? Where?”

“I don’t care.”

“For how long?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“To do what?”

Maitimo bound off the last ribbon, and turned Findekáno to face him. “To join with me,” he said, and was relieved that his voice came out strong and true. _Before my father can make me feel foolish about that, too._ “If you are certain you will not regret it.”

Findekáno sucked in a breath, and for just a moment, Maitimo saw a flicker of something in his eyes he’d seen seldom before. He’d seen it from Ingwë, and rarely from his mother, most notably when his youngest brother had been born. “Regrets we may have, in great measure,” he said, and seemed only troubled for a moment. “But this, I think, will not be one of them.”

The light of the forge glittered on golden threads, woven in and out of inky black tresses. It was nothing to the look in Findekáno’s eyes, or the warmth kindled there between them.

“Then let me get my coat,” Maitimo said simply, and Findekáno beamed, all thoughts of prophecy and the future turned to the night ahead and no farther.


End file.
